CHAPTER XXX.
GLACIERS.
THE glacier is one of the wonderful things of the northern regions. We will visit one with Dr. Hayes, and, on our return to the vessel, listen to some curious and interesting facts concerning it. Although there was no sunshine at the time of the first glacier excursion, the twilight was long and clear; it was October twenty-first. The run was made to the foot of the glacier from the vessel, with the dogs, in forty minutes. It appeared here as a great ice-wall, one hundred feet high and a mile broad. The glacier in descending the valley extended in breadth not quite to the slope of the hills, so it left between them and each of its sides a gorge. It is very curious that the ice should not lean against the hills as it slips along and thus fill up all the valley as water would.
Our party first stopped and examined the front face of the glacier. It was nearly perpendicular, but bulging out a little in the middle. It was worn in places by the summer streams which run over it, and marred in other parts by the fall of great fragments into the valley below. While our visitors were gazing at it a crystal block came down as an angry hint for them to stand from under. Wisely heeding the warning, they turned up one of the gorges between the glacier side and the hill. Here was rough traveling, and, we should think, dangerous too. There were strewed along in their path ice fragments from the glacier on one side, and rocks and earth which had slid down the hill on the other. If the glacier was as evil disposed as its children, the icebergs, it might let loose some of its projecting crags on their heads.
Finding a favorable place, they began to cut steps in the side of the glacier in order to mount to its surface. Having reached the top they cautiously walked to the center of the icy stream, drove two stakes on a line in it, and then two half way between these and the sides of the glacier. Then they measured the distance of these stakes from each other, and sighted from their tops fixed objects on the hills. They purposed to come in the spring and examine the distance apart of the stakes, and sight from them the fixed objects, so as to determine how fast the frozen river was moving down the valley. Having set the stakes they scampered back to the vessel.
After a little rest another journey to the glacier was made, this time without the dogs, the sledges, having a light outfit, being drawn by the men. These were young Knorr, the sailor M'Donald, Mr. Heywood, a landsman from the west—an amateur explorer—the Dane, Petersen, and the Esquimo, Peter. When they arrived at the gorge, the way was so rough that they were compelled to carry the sledge loads in parcels on their backs. It was rough work, and they sought an early camp; but with the frowning ice-cliffs on one side and hill-crags on the other, both evil-minded in the use of their icy and rocky missiles, and with also the uneven bed of rocks beneath them, no wonder they did not sleep. They were soon astir, pushed farther up the gorge, and finding a favorable place, began to cut steps up the glacier. The first one who attempted to mount reached some distance, then slipped, and in sliding down carried with him his companions who were following, and the whole company were promiscuously tumbled into the gorge. The one going ahead had better luck the next trial, carrying a rope by which the sledge was drawn up, and all mounted in safety.
They now started off up this ice-river toward the great sea of ice from whence it flowed. The surface was at first rough, and of course slightly descending toward its front edge. Dr. Hayes walked in advance of the sledge party, carrying a pole over his head grasped by both hands, being fearful of the treacherous cracks hidden by their ice. Soon down he went into one, but the pole reached across the chasm and he scrambled out. The depth of the chasm remains a mystery to this day. The ice grew smoother as they proceeded, and they made about five miles, pitched their canvas tents, cooked with their lamp a good supper, made coffee, ate and drank like weary men, crept into their fur sleeping bags, and slept soundly though the thermometer was about fifteen degrees below zero. The next day they traveled thirty miles, and came upon an even plain where the surface of the ice-sea was covered with many feet of snow, the crust of which broke through at every step. This made very hard traveling, yet the following day they tramped twenty-five miles more. Now came the ever-at-hand Arctic storm. They camped, but lower and lower fell the temperature, and fiercer and fiercer blew the wind. They could not sleep, so they decided to turn their faces homeward. The frost nipped their fingers, and assailed their faces, as they hastily packed up and started. They were five thousand feet above the level of the sea, and seventy miles from the coast, and were standing in the midst of a vast icy desert. There was neither mountain nor hill in sight. As in mid-ocean the sailor beholds the sea bounded only by the sky, so here they beheld only ice, which stretched away to the horizon on every side—truly a sea of ice. Clouds of snow whirled along its surface, at times rising and disappearing in the cold air, or drifted across the face of the setting moon—beautiful clouds of fleecy whiteness to the eye, but "burning" the flesh as they pelted the retreating explorers, like the fiery sand-clouds of the Great Sahara. They scud before the wind, which they dared not for a moment face, nor halted until they had traveled forty miles and descended two thousand feet. They then pitched their tents, the cold and wind having lessened though yet severe. They arrived at the ship the next evening, not seriously the worse for their daring "sea-voyage" on foot.
Having been refreshed by food and rest, no doubt our explorers discussed the great glacier problem, and pleasantly chased away many an hour in talk about what they had seen and what they had read on this interesting subject. We think their conversation included some of the following facts:—
The ice upon which they had been voyaging is a part of a great ocean of ice covering the central line of Greenland from Cape Farewell on the south to the farthest known northern boundary, a distance of at least twelve hundred miles. Instead of being formed of drops of water like more southern oceans, it is made up of crystallized dew-drops and snow-flakes, which have been falling for ages, and which in these cold regions have no summer long enough, nor of sufficient heat, to convert them into water again.
But if the crystal dews and snows continue to fall for ages, and never melt, what prevents them from piling up to the sky, and sinking the very continent? The all-wise Director of the universe has made a very curious arrangement to prevent such a result. This ice-ocean runs off into the sea in great ice-rivers which find their way to the shore on both sides of the continent, just as the water does which falls from the clouds on the top of the Andes of South America. There we see the mighty Amazon, one of its rivers, almost an ocean of itself, as it sweeps along its banks between mountains, and through immense forests. Greenland has its Amazons in vastness and grandeur, as well as its smaller rivers and little streams. It has also its lakes and sublime Niagaras, its falls and cascades. But they are ice instead of water; that is all the difference between this Arctic circulation and that of warmer regions.
But of course this ice is not like that which many of the readers see every winter. It is a half-solid, pasty kind of substance. It holds together, yet slides along from the higher land where it accumulates, filling up the valleys, breaking through the openings in the mountain and hilly ridges, and pouring over the precipices; slowly, silently, but with mighty force, ever pressing onward until it reaches the sea.
These ice rivers move very slowly. It will be remembered that Dr. Hayes drove some stakes down in the one he visited in October. In the following July he visited the glacier again, and compared the relation of these to the landmarks he had noted. He thus found that this ice-river moved over one hundred feet a year. It had come down the valley ten miles. Two more miles would bring it to the sea. Some glacier streams which they visited were yet many miles from the shore, one as far away as sixty miles. The Great Glacier of Humboldt, farther north, was several times visited by Dr. Kane and parties of his explorers. Its face is a solid, glassy wall three hundred feet above the water-level, and in extending from Cape Agassiz, a measured distance north, of sixty miles, and then disappearing in the unknown polar regions. Surely this must be the mouth of the Amazon of glacier rivers.
But the history of these rivers does not end when they reach the sea. When their broad and high glassy front touches the water it does not melt away nor fall to pieces, but goes down to the bottom, and if it be a shallow bay or arm of the sea, pushes the water back and fills up the whole space, it may be for many miles. When it reaches water so deep that more than seven eighths of its front is below the surface, it begins to feel an upward pressure, just as a piece of wood when forced below its natural water-line will spring back. So after a while this upward pressure breaks off the massive front, perhaps miles in extent, and many hundred feet in height. As this is launched into the sea its thunder crash is heard for miles, and the water boils like a caldron, while the disengaged mass rolls and plunges until, finding its equilibrium, it sails away a majestic ICEBERG. Hereafter the snow will at times cover it with a mantle of pure whiteness; the fierce storms will beat upon its defiant brow; the beams of the rising and setting sun will display their sparkling glories on its craggy top, or, falling upon the misty cloud which envelopes it, will encircle it with all the varying hues of the rainbow. As it voyages in stately dignity southward, anchored, it may be, at times for months, it will pass in sullen silence the drear, long, dark Arctic night, and emerge into the brief summer to be enlivened as the home of innumerable sea-fowl, who will rear their young upon its cold breast. Ultimately it will go back to the drops of water from which it came, to make a part of the great ocean, and possibly to sail away in clouds over the frozen regions, and to drop again upon its glassy plain in sparkling crystals.